Remote tea at 4 to guide SocGen through covid-19

Could “rhythm” and “rituals” be crucial to financial organisations now forced to work-from-home? A blog post by France-based giant SocGen’s chief innovation officer Claire Calmejane, on LinkedIn, has gained plenty attention.

“We look back at the last three weeks, which have seen the deployment of the power of collective intelligence and the implementation of new team rituals”, Claire Calmejane writes in her article of last Thursday, picked up in turn by Finextra.

She describes her own organisation as “all of the Societe Generale group’s innovators, data scientists and digital leaders”.

Open-space ideal

“The goal is to find back our open space codes, but remotely. When all is said and done, one of the main difficulties with remote working is organising ourselves, especially when the conditions in which we have to implement it are far from ideal. In a single day, 100% of the innovation teams had to move to remote working under a lockdown, and of course we had to make sure nobody was left behind.Following some initial glitches, we found our rhythm and our rituals!,” writes Claire Calmejane.

The day starts with a short “check-in”. 4 o’clock sees a “Tea time & learn” session, focused on a topic, and there is a “weekly stand-up” to review progress overall.

“I am convinced that some rituals, some of these practices, will remain and grow after the crisis,” she adds.